Popular tobacco-based articles, such as cigarettes, cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco products, conventionally have been sold in packages. For cigarettes in particular, each full package typically contains about 20 cigarettes. Cigarettes have been packaged in containers known as so-called “soft packs.” See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,695,422 to Tripodi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,717,017 to Sprinkel, Jr., et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,333,729 to Wolfe, all of which are incorporated herein by reference. Cigarettes also have been packaged in containers known as so-called “hard packs” or “crush proof boxes.” See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,581 to Fox et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,944,066 to Niepmann, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,734 to Allen et al., all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Smokeless tobacco is tobacco that is placed in the mouth and not combusted. There are various types of smokeless tobacco including chewing tobacco, moist smokeless tobacco, snus and dry snuff. Smokeless tobacco products have been packaged in tins, “pucks” or “pots” that are manufactured from metal or plastic. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,098,421 to Foster, U.S. Pat. No. 4,190,170 to Boyd, U.S. Pat. No. 8,556,070 to Bried et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,910,781 to Pipes et al., and U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0065076 to Bergstrom et al., U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0065077 to Lofgreen-Ohrn et al., U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2011/0303511 to Brinkley et al., and U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2016/0270440 to Patel et al., all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
In recent years, devices have been proposed as improvements upon, or alternatives to, smoking products that require combusting tobacco for use. Many of these devices purportedly have been designed to provide the sensations associated with cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoking, but without delivering considerable quantities of incomplete combustion and pyrolysis products that result from the burning of tobacco. To this end, there have been proposed numerous alternative smoking products, flavor generators, and medicinal inhalers that utilize electrical energy to vaporize or heat a volatile material, or attempt to provide the sensations of cigarette, cigar, or pipe smoking without burning tobacco to a significant degree. See, for example, the various alternative smoking articles, aerosol delivery devices and heat generating sources set forth in the background art described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,881,737 to Collett et al., U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2013/0255702 to Griffith Jr. et al., U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2014/0000638 to Sebastian et al., and U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2014/0096781 to Sears et al., all of which are incorporated by reference. See also, for example, the various implementations of products and heating configurations described in the background sections of U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,594 to Counts et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 8,079,371 to Robinson et al., which are incorporated by reference.
Some embodiments of aerosol delivery devices such as so-called “e-cigarettes” may employ cartridges to store an aerosol precursor useable in conjunction with a control body of an aerosol delivery device to form aerosol and simulate smoking, as described above. The cartridge and control body may be packaged separately or together, and separately-packaged replacements for each may be offered.
In addition to providing means for distributing, storing or otherwise containing one or more tobacco-based articles, their packages may be utilized to communicate information to a consumer. For instance, graphics and text are typically applied to the exterior of the package to communicate various information regarding the articles, including branding, advertising, regulatory information, nutritional information, and promotional information. Conventional packages are often relatively small in size and may have a limited visible exterior surface area for providing information. Thus, the information that may be provided via the available display surfaces may also be limited.
It may therefore be desirable to provide tobacco-based articles and their packaging with additional or alternative means to transfer information related thereto.